Love's Song
by Lewot
Summary: Some random thing that I wrote on a whim, from the perspective of Olimar's first Red Pikmin. I'll probably write more chapters eventually, but I can't say when.


The first thing I remember is . . . falling.

But it wasn't like falling is now. It was somehow . . . gentle. Or so I seem to remember it feeling at the time. The others cast me as something of a romanticizer.

After falling came . . . embrace. It was warm and cold at the same time. I didn't know anything, but I didn't need to. I was safe, and it would last forever.

Then it ended. Rather violently, I must say. I know now that what had embraced me was the ground, and so it follows that what pulled me up was stronger than the ground. And I know now that the ground is the world, so it follows that what pulled me up was stronger than the world. I knew nothing of strength, and then suddenly I was met with all of it, pulling me up. A prophetic introduction, if you'll allow me to indulge.

I entered the world spinning, and since I knew nothing of the world, I thought _it_ was spinning, and that this was normal. It would last forever, and then it ended.

I . . . saw. The world was . . . green, brown, blue, and everything else. Beyond all, strange.

But strangest was . . . It. It stood before me, seeing me. At the time I thought myself clever for sussing that It, having come after my encounter with all strength, must have been Strength itself. Strength looked at me, and I, though not understanding that I was doing so at the time, looked at it.

Strength confused me because, despite my not knowing anything, I found that in fact I had known some things, and that according to those things that I had always known but had only then found any use for, Strength was . . . right, but wrong. Two legs, a belly, two arms, a head, a stem, a light—that was right. But Strength was . . . big, and its head even bigger, and its even bigger head was inside an even bigger head than that, but that biggest head was . . . invisible? Except I could see it. But I could also see inside it. The stem was attached, though, so it must be the real head.

But then why was the nose, which was also too big, on the inside head that was smaller but still far too big?

. . . What was a nose, anyway? I knew that I had one, but why?

That was the first time I asked "Why?" The others think me silly for how often I do it. But I barely remember the first time, because immediately after it came . . .

The Song.

None can ever describe the Song. As loud and terrifying as the roars of the monsters I would later meet, yet calm and soothing, full of serenity and love beyond anything that anyone can comprehend.

The Song came from Strength, and it was then that I knew that Strength was not Strength, but Love.

Love is still strange, but that is part of what makes it wonderful. Like the Song. Love's Song.

The Song was all I needed to know. I ran to Love's side, and followed it wherever it went. I would follow it forever. We would be together, and it would last forever.

Then it threw me at a tree.

I remembered falling, but this was not like the gentle falling that may have only been gentle in my mind before it was my mind. This was my first dose of Fear.

We do only one thing when we Fear. We fight.

I fought the tree, and it didn't fight back, so I won.

The tree fell, I fell (again), and the tree's head fell.

I was on the ground next to the tree's severed head, and that was where I began to learn of the things that I knew without having to know them.

I knew that I should run to the tree's head. I did.

I knew that I should pick up the tree's head. I reached out for it with my arms.

I paused here for the smallest amount of time, curious that my arms were the same color as the tree's head. But I knew that I had to move on, so I picked up the tree's head with my same-colored arms.

It took all my strength to lift the tree's head. But I knew that I had to do it, and I succeeded.

Then I knew that I had to . . . carry.

Carrying was like running but while lifting the tree's head, and I found that using my strength to lift the tree's head meant that my running happened much slower. During the time I spent carrying the tree's head, which seemed to go on forever at the time, I deduced that strength must also be used for running, but in a different way. How strange.

While I was carrying, Love watched me. I felt nervous, hoping that what I was doing, which after all was all that I knew to do, would please Love.

As I knew to fight and to carry, I knew where to go. There was something there. Something even bigger than Love; even bigger than the tree whose head I carried. It had three legs instead of two, but it had no belly and no arms, just a head. I looked up to see if the head had a stem and a light on top, but it was too big, too far for me to see.

I could feel it calling to me, though. It was like a light that couldn't be seen. I came to understand that while I knew to fight and carry, I didn't know where to go; no, this thing, this invisible light, was what knew where to go, and it was telling me, like a silent song. Not like Love's Song, for that was . . . impossible to understand. This invisible light, this silent song, was strange, but I understood it. The big thing with three legs had a light, but it was not like other lights.

I called it the Big Light.

When I looked back down at the tree's head that I was carrying, my own light bobbed into view, and this was the first time that I noticed it. I felt special, because I had a light, just like Love, and kind of like the Big Light.

My light was the same color as the tree had been before I removed its head.

When I carried the tree's head under the Big Light, I knew, in the unknowing way that I knew things, that my job was done. The Big Light showered me in light. This light was regular light—I could see it—and it was magical.

The magical light threw the tree's head up at the Big Light, and the Big Light ate the tree's head.

The Big Light's magical light stopped coming down. I was a little sad.

I could feel the Big Light thinking. Then it made a sound—nothing like the Song—and then something fell down from somewhere above the Big Light. Two things, actually. They had bellies and stems and lights—lights exactly like mine—but no legs or arms or heads.

Come to think of it, from what I could tell, their falling did look gentler than my terrifying experience of being thrown by Love.

The somethings lodged themselves into the ground, but left their lights sticking out. I wasn't sure what to think about them. My knowledge that happens without knowledge didn't tell me to do anything with them, so I just looked at them.

The Song came again, and, elated beyond all euphoria, I ran to Love again, all else forgotten.

I watched as Love put his arms on one of the lights sticking out of the ground and pulled it up. It spun over his head and landed next to me. I looked at it, keeping one eye on Love.

The thing looked right. It had legs, a belly, arms, a head, a nose, a stem, and a light.

Eventually I would come to realize that this is what I look like, too.

I waved at the thing, and I heard a sound—nothing like the Song—come from my nose. The thing looked down at one of its arms, then waved back at me, and made the same sound.

Love pulled the other light from the ground, and it was the same.

The three of us chased after Love, ever flighty, and stopped near another tree. Love reached backward, seeming not to pay much mind to which of us it grabbed by the stem, and tossed the two others at the tree.

I stayed with Love. I felt special.

Love and I watched as the two others broke off the tree's head and carried it over to the Big Light. Two more things came out of the Big Light, and this time I was far enough away that I could see them pop out of the very top of the Big Light, where there seemed to be several white things spinning. The Big Light was the same color as me, and so were the two who had carried the tree's head which was also the same color, and when Love pulled two more things from the ground, they were the same color as well.

We all had the same color of lights, so how come the Big Light had several white lights? And why was Love's light so . . . strange?

Love then threw all of us at another tree, and this tree's head was gigantic. Smaller than the Big Light, but bigger than Love. I used all my strength, but I couldn't lift it. The others ran around and grabbed it at different sides, and when we all used all of our strength, then we could lift it.

Together, we carried it. We gave it to the Big Light, and many things popped out. I decided to call these things . . . seeds.

And Love pulled all the seeds from the ground with its strength, and they all became more of us.

Together, we were us. Together, we could carry things that I alone couldn't lift.

The others weren't things. They were me, but not me. They were part of us. The part of us that wasn't me, but was like me. We were . . . us.

I loved them—I loved us. And it was then that I realized that love was not only Love, but love. I loved Love the most—I think we all did—but I also loved the others. I loved them for them, and I loved them for what we became when we were us.

And so this was life. We would fight, carry, and multiply.

I stayed the same, but we grew. There were many of us, and together we were more.

As we experienced life, slowly (it seemed), the world darkened. When it was getting dark, Love took us somewhere and showed us a Thing.

It was a big Thing; hard and heavy. But together, we were many, and we lifted it.

This Thing was not for the Big Light; we knew that. There was another, even bigger, even stranger Thing near the Big Light, which so far we had ignored. Love seemed pleased when we carrid the Thing to the Other Thing, so I concluded that the Other Thing was something like the Big Light, and that it was where we should bring Things.

The Other Thing was strange, though. It didn't make any seeds when we fed it the Thing. But Love seemed pleased, and so we were happy.

It was very dark, though. Darkness was new, and strange, and I felt some small Fear because darkness made it harder to see, and somehow I got the idea that something that would give me a lot of Fear might be lurking unseen in the darkness.

If only I'd been wrong.

Love gave us a melancholic little tweet of a Song that said, in its mysterious way, "We must part now, but we'll meet again." Apart from Love, and Fearing the darkness, we ran to the legs of the Big Light and shimmied up them, entering the holes at the top.

Inside the Big Light was strange, for it was even darker than outside, and yet it was a comforting kind of darkness instead of a Fearful kind like that we had fled. It was a light darkness, which was appropriate enough since we were inside the Big Light.

It was like the embrace of the ground; different, but the same. We were safe.

The world inside the Big Light began to shake, but we knew we were safe, so we felt no Fear. But the same feeling that sometimes makes me ask why things are how they are made me poke my head just a little ways out of the hole I had climbed into to see what was going on.

The ground was falling away below the Big Light, and a sort of up-and-down sounding noise was coming from above, where its several white lights were. The Other Thing was the only thing not falling away with the ground, and I looked at it.

Just as Love's head is visible but invisible, so was the Other Thing's arm. And just as Love has another head inside his big head, I could see Love sitting inside the Other Thing's arm. Love seemed safe.

So then, the Other Thing was a little like the Big Light. It didn't make seeds, but it kept Love safe from the bad kind of darkness, and from the ground when it fell away. Since it was like the Big Light, I decided to call it the Big Thing.

The ground kept falling away from the Big Light and the Big Thing, and as I watched, the ground changed from being everywhere to being only somewhere. A round somewhere, sitting on an even bigger ground that seemed to be made of darkness.

I saw the whole ground, and came to understand that the ground was the world, and that the world was all, and that the bigger ground made of darkness was where the world was—it was the world's world. Strange, but beautiful.

The world's world had little lights floating around in its darkness. Stranger still, but still beautiful.

The Big Thing stayed close to the Big Light, so it seemed that Love was safe, so I ducked my head back into the Big Light and snuggled up with everyone. Then, for the first time, I slept.


End file.
